Weather and Traffic

Cool weather getting closer, but won’t quite make it to South Florida

A cold front was moving into North Florida on Tuesday morning, (Credit: NOAA)

Let’s talk about cold fronts!

The first one of the season was working its way across the panhandle Tuesday morning and should make it all the way through North Florida and into Central Florida on Wednesday.

Behind it is a surge of cool air that has been dropping temperatures all the way from the Canadian border south into Texas and the Gulf Coast. In western Florida, where the front had already passed, it was 59 degrees Tuesday morning in Milton, northeast of Pensacola.

Far to the north and west, it was 53 degrees in St. Louis, 39 degrees in Green Bay, Wis., and 34 degrees in Marquette, Mich., where a frost advisory was issued for Tuesday night.

On Thursday, after the front passes through North Florida, the low temperature will be near 60 degrees in Jacksonville and a high of just 83 with lower humidity.

How far down the peninsula will the front get? Just to the north of Lake Okeechobee, according to the National Weather Service in Miami. And then it will stall out.

So no cool dry air for Palm Beach, but the front will affect South Florida weather with an increase in clouds and showers. In fact, ahead of the front, a surge of warm air from the south will push temperatures in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach to near record highs on Tuesday and Wednesday, forecasters said. That’s mid-90s.

We’ll return to more normal temperatures, with highs in the upper 80s, on Thursday and Friday.

The cold front tails all the way into the southern Gulf of Mexico, and that’s what forecasters believe may lead to tropical development by Wednesday or Thursday of this week. The National Hurricane Center was already giving the area a 20 percent chance of development over the next 48 hours.

Many computer models see the system ramping up into a tropical storm and possibly moving in to the Florida panhandle this weekend. The GFS model, on the other hand, forecasts a landfall in Mexico.

THE ATLANTIC PLAYERS: Hurricane Katia, a strong Category 3 storm with winds of 125 mph, now looks almost certain to spin out to sea and not affect land. Invest 95L, in the Eastern Atlantic, was organizing quickly and could become Tropical Storm Maria in the next 12 to 24 hours.

There are two possible scenarios for 95L/ Maria. One is a track over the Northeastern Lesser Antilles, after which a curve to the north is likely. Another is that the system stays to the south and enters the Caribbean. If that happens, it’s too early to speculate on where the storm may go.